What are your special interests?

Music has always been my special interest since I was 9 years old. I'm 29 now 

I also love history, building things, playing instruments, and collecting. I love collecting Funko Pops and vinyl records too. 

Hobbies - making things e.g. bookcase, green oak kitchen island with pegged joints - I made copper worktop out of my old hot water cylinder, the electric wheelchair I use (I did all the welding, made wheel hubs, I used a commercial wheelchair controller, motors and joystick as it would have taken ages to design and build those as well as the mechanical bits) - I built it because the NHS one was rubbish.

I've almost finished fixing an old FTIR infrared spectrometer - still need to sort out the optics in the Michelson interferometer which I think is broken as the adjustments don't give full interference rings - strangely the moving mirror in the Michelson interferometer is a defraction grating. 

I've also started fixing an old van to transport me and the wheelchair - I knew it needed work when I purchased it, but it has turned out to need a lot of work which is taking me rather a long time (months) as I can't do much each day (sometimes nothing when I'm not well enough) - I've fixed a lot on it but I still need to do some welding on it.

Before the van I'd started working on building a tokamak - I did check with the relevant government department (HSE) before starting on it that it was within the law to build and run one from a domestic dwelling - I've started with the vacuum system and as I'm on a budget I had to get a secondhand turbo molecular vacuum pump which has required quite a lot of work to get the mating surface perfectly flat (and still needs work).  I'll probably donate the tokamak to a University when I finally finish it and get it up and running as I believe there aren't any Universities in the UK that have one.  I got interested in tokamaks when my nephew asked me to 3d print the ITER tokamak (you can download the files for free from the ITER website), it took around three and a half months to finish it with the 3d printer often running 24 hours a day (I don't think he realised quite how much work was involved when he asked me to print it).

I've also been cutting keys for a few years and have setup a website so people can order keys cut from a photo - I started looking into keys a few years ago when I was doing a part time course at college and had to wait 40 minutes for the one key they had for the wheelchair lift, I decided that it would be worth having my own so that I wouldn't have the same problem again and after taking a photo of it I then filed a blank key to the same shape - since then I purchased several key cutting machines and loads of key blanks - fortunately I don't get many orders through my website as my health isn't up to doing more than a few a week and as such the turnover is below the point where you need to pay tax and as I've never made a profit in each year I would count it as a hobby.

Ive been revisiting my older speical interests that I had stoped doing when I was in bad burnout and they are my chemical romance(one of my  3 more specific musican ones ther others being s club 7/jrs/8 and do I even need to Mention my biggest speical interest for y’all that don’t know it’s Tay Tay) and pro wrestling (all uk stuff and wwf/wwe and ecw and wcw mostly)at one point I had over 50 itv era uk DVDs as well as wwe DVDs I even had both the unaired and air wos relaunches and I had a WAW dvd that had Scott hall and me Kennedy/anderson in 

I found a good shirt too it’s the wrestlers tour it’s old school wed wrestlers but wirh the style of the eras tour of Tay Tay 

That's apparently something that most autistic people have - the desire to learn MORE. But mainstream schools don't provide the necessary learning tools for us and that's why we aren't often seen as 'academically gifted' or whatever... I'm not a psychologist or anything so that's why I say 'apparently', because it is based off of observation and reading things other autistics say. 

That was actually incredibly interesting. I love learning about the inner workings of the human mind... My favourite poet is Edgar Allan Poe.

I've played odyssey a couple of times - it's my favourite game. I also play as Alexios, but my husband plays as Kassandra!

Lotus said:

I'm currently exploring ancient Egypt with my avatar Bayek - he's a medjay (a sort of sheriff, or protector) in the game assassin's creed origins.

Snap! Currently in Ancient Greece playing Assassins Creed Odyssey as a mercenary named Alexios tracking down my family and trying to save them from a cult. It’s got a lot of historical characters and references in game which is a nice touch. The map is absolutely huge too, this game could take a while to fully complete. There’s also ship battles where you fight other ships in the open ocean. It’s very satisfying destroying a ship by ramming it and watching it split in two. 

Reading novels has been a lifetime interest - you can read what people are thinking and feeling, unlike in real life! 

Video games - I'm currently exploring ancient Egypt with my avatar Bayek - he's a medjay (a sort of sheriff, or protector) in the game assassin's creed origins. I can ride a horse in it too, which is great as one of my interests as a child/teen was horses and riding.

I am also interested in AI and robots, and wondering how that technology will progress and if we'll ever have truly human like robots.

History, local and world wide, politics, gaming, space, psychology. 

Those are pretty tame really.

Hi 190E(Taylor’s version) - great list of interests :-)   I wondered if I would find aeroplanes of the battle of Britain in your list tho' given your chosen chat group name?

If you like weird stuff you should start reading jules Verne his best works are around the world im 80 days,journey to the centr of the earth and 20,0000 leagues under the sea

I didn't understand any of that either.

My interests are ancient and medieval history, cooking and gardening. General weird stuff too, the more I look the stranger things become and the more weirdness happens, like falling down a rabbit hole whilst thinking about Lewis Carrol.

When I was younger (18-25 years old), my ultimate goal was to find an absolute truth, whatever that would be. I came to the conclusion this was unrealistic and that even if that existed, it would likely not satisfy me.

Nowadays (+25 years old) it's shared between a part of morality/empathy on one hand, and a part about modelling the world (including our mind) on the other.

I do not get interest in everything, but am quite selective, and it must come from my own desire of justice (for morality) or from will and curiosity (for modelling the world).

So, for example, at University while studying "hard science" I dedicated a large part of my time to poetry and philosophy (problems about the mind, consciousness, reading Descartes, William James, B Russell, Schopenhauer, etc.) because I many times didn't understand or enjoy what I was being told there, and many times felt there was no room for self-directed-ness.

So I think there is a dual aspect of my special interests, which I like to relate to "great minds" even though I'm not one of those: Chomsky, Bertrand Russell, and others. Currently, one of my main interests then is social justice / human rights: to defend the rights of those suffering to the extent I can.

The other side it's very focused on programming, but in ways that relates to mathematics and neuroscience (like artificial intelligence models.)

And yes, I can talk at length of these, and be tiring and boring to others, which I think makes them a special interest (/s).

Finding out how everything works. And I do mean everything. From toe-nail clippers to the world economy. I cannot rest until I learn MORE! I've been like that since I was a toddler.

I've had lots of other interests over the years—hobbies, hyper-fixations, and such; 100+ at last count—but learning how things work, figuring things out, discovering new things: that's fundamentally my true special interest.

I have nothing like a photographic memory. I forget things all the time. I'll know the initial letter of something, but struggle to recall anything more. I read a book about something new and I've have forgotten 90% of it a few days later. I remember some things, even tiny details, clearly for decades, though. But I really enjoy learning things in the moment and I'm sure it all leaves some lasting impression in the old brain somewhere.

Folklore is a really good Taylor swift album :p sorry I actually had to if I didn’t id problet have a lump sticking out my neck like when homes stos him self being angry at Bart 

but yeah I do love a bit of folk/more era

Pinder is the family rhe runs pinders circus

350s are a type of electric multiple unit know as a desire 507/508 are a emu called the pep units mostly used in merseyrail 502/503 is what the 507/508 replaced Joe them selves replaced by the 777

please tell me you’ve heard Taylor swift though?

if not listen to the song paper rings 

I don't really know what any of that means but now i want to. What's a pinder? What do the 350s, 502s, 503s, 507, and 508 mean?

same here...

Languages, dragons, Korea, minimalism. Although I don’t share my interests often, I am starting to do so. I really, really like folklore and paranormal too.